Excellent. Thanks for sharing this.

Dam, I bought his book thinking it would be an account of Crown Prince Ruporecht and the German army he commanded, instead it's yet another lecture on British army tactics. He barely mentions German army tactics at all.

@davidluck1678

2 жыл бұрын

Rupprecht wrote a 3-volume WWI memoir. Find a copy. Read it.

@gandydancer9710

Жыл бұрын

@@davidluck1678 That's no excuse for Boff ignoring the agreed title of this lecture. He even promises to reach the subject of Rupprecht's account in the beginning of this account... but I must have blinked and missed it. That the Germans somehow achieved advances unseen in the previous history of trench warfare on the Western Front in WWI against a British military who, according to the likes of Boff, had replaced its previous ineptitude with a high level of performance, remains unexplained at the end of this lecture. He promises a substitute for the "consensus view", bur all he comes up with is that some German attacks failed.... when executed by elements that hadn't been trained in stormtrooper tactics. Which is neither here nor there.

@a.steinkeller7048

3 ай бұрын

Yet another British self-obsession.

Excellent talk, thank you!

Not a new topic - indeed Farrah Hockley covered the same ground in the 1960s and Gary Sheffield not so long ago. Pity really Dr Boff stayed so far from the supposed subject of fish presentation

@gandydancer9710

Жыл бұрын

I feel more outrage than pity.

🎂Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria 05-18-2022

Thank you. It seems the German army was able to accomplish much when launching overall campaign of conquest, but winning a long war against coalitions of broad potential and power is not practically possible.

Very interesting....thanks

So the British army played the leading rolling in defeating the German army in 1918. It seem to they tried that in 1917 and when no where. And now after the German spring offensive, in which the British army was beaten so badly that the French and American army to send troops plugging hole and gaps in order to prevent the Germans from rolling up the British army. Wow, those are so very fine rose tinned glass you have on.

@johnpeate4544

2 жыл бұрын

In the final 100 days of the Great War the BEF engaged, and defeated, 99 of the 197 German Divisions in the West. Between July 18 and the end of the war, the French, American and Belgian armies combined captured 196,500 prisoners-of-war and 3,775 guns, while British forces, with a smaller army than the French, engaged the main mass of the German Army and captured 188,700 prisoners and 2,840 guns. Let me repeat that: French, American and Belgian armies combined captured 196,500 prisoners-of-war and 3,775 guns, *while British forces, with a smaller army than the French, engaged the main mass of the German Army and captured 188,700 prisoners and 2,840 guns.* British forces captured only *8,000 fewer prisoners and 935 less guns than the other allies combined.* In other words the British Army took just under *50% of the prisoners and just over 40% of the guns.* Historian John Terraine: _’The toughest assignment in modern British military history (i.e. since the creation of our first real Regular Army, the New Model) has been high command in war against the main body of a main continental enemy. Three British officers have undertaken such a task and brought it to a successful conclusion: the Duke of Marlborough, the Duke of Wellington and Field-Marshal Lord Haig._ _And in that Final Offensive, which ended with a German delegation crossing the lines with a white flag to ask for an armistice, the British Armies under Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig captured 188,700 prisoners and 2840 guns. All the other Allies together, French, Americans, Belgians, captured 196,500 prisoners and 3775 guns. In other words, the British took just under 50% of all the prisoners and just over 40% of all the guns._ _That was the achievement of the British Citizen Army; I have called it, more than once, the 'finest hour' of the British Army. There has never been anything like that '100 Days' Campaign' of continuous victory in the whole of our military history. In the words of one who served from 1916 to 1918 and died only recently, Professor C. E. Carrington:_ \In our thousand years of national history there has been one short period (1916-1918) when Britain possessed the most effective army in the world, and used it to win decisive victory._ _The most sinister of all the delusions within the trauma was to lose sight of that._ _What was the position of Haig's army on that day? It amounted to nearly two million men of the British Empire - the largest land force in the Empire's history. And they had just reached the end of a 'Hundred Days' Campaign' as glorious and decisive as that of 1815 which concluded the Battle of Waterloo - but infinitely less known._ _It was, in fact an unparalleled achievement in the history of the British Army, revealed by the stark statistics. And this was done in nine successive victories which were largely instrumental in bringing the war to an end in 1918 - and a consummation that Haig was determined to bring about._ _These victories should be as famous as Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet or Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria and Waterloo. Instead, they are forgotten and unknown, so I will list them now:_ ♦ The Battle of Amiens, 8 August 1918 ('the black day of the German Army'); ♦The Battle of Albert, 21 August (the day on which Haig told Churchill 'we ought to do our utmost to get a decision this autumn'); ♦The Battle of the Scarpe, 26 August; ♦The Battles of Havrincourt and Epehy, 12 September (the approaches to the HindenburgLine); ♦The Breaking of the Hindenburg Line, 27 September - 5 October (35,000 prisoners & 380 guns taken, the British Army's greatest feat of arms in all its history); ♦The Battle of Flanders, 28 September; ♦The of Le Cateau, 6 October; ♦The of the Selle, 17 October; ♦The of the Sambre, 1-11 November. These were Haig's victories, handsomely acknowledged by Marshal Foch: _Never at any time in history has the British Army achieved greater results in attack than in this unbroken offensive .... The victory was indeed complete, thanks to the Commanders of Armies, Corps and Divisions, thanks above all to the unselfishness, to the wise, loyal and energetic policy of their Commander-in-Chief, who made easy a great combination and sanctioned a prolonged and gigantic effort.’_

@gandydancer9710

Жыл бұрын

@@johnpeate4544 You keep posting the identical wall of trash on multiple threads. But by the final 100 days of the war the Germans had already shot their bolt. That's not when Germany was defeated, that was merely the medal ceremony.

Won't give this a 'thumbs down' but equally cannot give it a 'thumbs up'. There are number of other lectures on the 1918 offensives of equal quality and in some ways better - it is a shame that Dr Boff so totally ignored the given title of his talk. A talk about the experiences of Rupprecht and the Bavarian Army in 1918 would have been of interest. This, however, is a good, although very derivative and 'run of the mill' , outline analysis of the 1918 offensives with nothing new to add, simply rehashing the same well covered ground again with no new material or ideas. Interesting but VERY disappointing. And as for the "First and last time in history... etc." the situation in 1918 was little different from 1944/5 or 1712-13 or 1678 or 1815 or... How is 1918 different in that respect? Yes in every one of those occasions we had allies but didn't we have France, Belgium, America, Portugal, etc. in 1918? I feel that Dr Boff is seeking to claim that somehow the British Army in 1918 won the war alone - far too jingoistic. Interesting but very disappointing and certainly not worthy of an academic of Dr Boff's abilities

@gandydancer9710

Жыл бұрын

You overestimate his abilities, apparently.

Good lecture👍

Mislead by the title of the presentation. Was disappointed that little information was included on the Crown Prince. Won't give it the thumbs down, but I felt cheated.

From what I remember reading when I was writing my thesis many years ago and from reading other historians, the experience of the First World War lead to the German Army radically improving in the 1920s under Seekt & Co. The Imperial German Army often seems now to be a quite stupid organisation, especially in the higher echelons.

@gandydancer9710

Жыл бұрын

Compared with who?